There was a lot happening on social media yesterday. Football enthusiasts debated what would happen during Super Bowl LII. Kardashian fans celebrated the news of Kylie Jenner’s new baby. And fans of Janet Jackson celebrated #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay while they waited to see what Justin Timberlake would do during his halftime show.

In 2004, Jackson and Timberlake performed together during the halftime show for Super Bowl XXXVIII. The two singers performed Timberlake’s hit, “Rock Your Body.” At the very end of the performance, while Timberlake sang the lyric “gonna have you naked by the end of this song,” he reached out to pull away some of Jackson’s costume. He revealed some of her right breast, and her nipple jewelry, on live television for 9/16ths of a second.

"Justin was supposed to pull away the rubber bustier to reveal a red lace bra,” Jackson’s representative said in a statement in the aftermath of the incident. “The garment collapsed and her breast was accidentally revealed." According to TIME, “While some speculated that the moment was premeditated as a publicity stunt, others pointed out that perhaps the red lace fabric that came off with the leather was actually supposed to stay on, covering Jackson’s accessorized nipple.” Whatever the case, the fallout from “nipplegate” was substantial—and incredibly one-sided.

Jackson released a videotaped apology. Timberlake also apologized, saying that the nipple reveal was “not intentional” and joking on Access Hollywood: “Hey man, we love giving you all something to talk about.” Jackson was uninvited from that year’s Grammy Awards, where she had been invited to introduce a tribute to Luther Vandross. Timberlake attended, performed twice, and took home two awards. In a feature story about the fallout from nipplegate, Rolling Stone reported that Viacom, the parent company of both MTV and CBS, “essentially blacklisted” Jackson by not showing her music videos on MTV and VH1, and refusing to air her songs on the radio stations they owned. Timberlake received no such treatment.

The fact of the matter is this. Something surprising happened, live on TV, between two performers. A nipple was revealed in a place where a nipple probably shouldn’t have been revealed. The person vilified for it was a woman of color. The person who seemingly got away scot-free—despite being the one who actually revealed the nipple, rather than just owning the nipple—was a white man. "I probably got 10 percent of the blame, and that says something about society,” Timberlake said in 2006. “I think that America's harsher on women. And I think that America is, you know, unfairly harsh on ethnic people."

What does that say about how our culture can demonize women’s bodies, and try to police them? What does that say about privilege? Who is “allowed” to act poorly, and who is not? Who gets punished, and who gets to laugh it off? In this situation, Timberlake—a pop star just launching his solo career after years with N*SYNC—suffered very few consequences compared to Jackson, a cultural icon and a lifelong performer.

There were some rumors floating around that Jackson would make an appearance during this year’s halftime show, or that Timberlake would make a public statement regarding Jackson in the run-up to the show. Neither of those things happened. It seems that Timberlake is more or less sticking to what he told ESPN in 2014, when an interviewer asked what he took away from the experience: "I take that I chose not to comment on it still, after 10 years. I'm not touching that thing with a 10-foot pole."

Even one of the loudest voices in vilifying Jackson at the time now admits that the reaction was overhyped. Back in 2004, then-FCC chairman Michael Powell described the incident as "a classless, crass, and deplorable stunt” and "a new low from primetime TV." But then in 2014, Powell told ESPN that the FCC overreacted and treated Jackson unfairly. "I personally thought that was really unfair. It all turned into being about her," he said. "In reality, if you slow the thing down, it's Justin ripping off her breastplate."

Timberlake’s performance last night involved a lot of things—flash mobs, a projection of Prince, and some questionable outfit choices—but one crucial element was missing. He never acknowledged what happened with Jackson (though he did include a potential (?) callback in his performance). And while only Jackson herself can say whether or not a public acknowledgement would mean anything to her, Twitter fans haven’t forgotten what happened—and they aren’t likely to do so any time soon.